You called me a chicken. You said I was too scared. But here I am, ready to face my fears and finish the journey through The Exorcist VR! Earlier this week we played through the first two episodes and aside from a few yelps, screams, and barely hidden tears, I think I did just fine. Sort of.

We’ll be livestreaming The Exorcist VR on HTC Vive today and monitoring chat using OVRdrop while in VR. The stream will be starting at approximately 2:20 PM PT and we’ll aim to last for about an hour or however long it takes to finish the last three chapters. We’ll be livestreaming directly to the UploadVR Facebook page. You can see the full stream embedded right here down below once it’s up:

Embedded livestream coming soon

You can see our archived streams all in this one handy Livestream playlist over on the official UploadVR YouTube channel (which you should totally subscribe to by the way). All future and current streams will be on Facebook, which you can see a list of here.

Let us know which games you want us to livestream next and what you want to see us do, specifically, in this or other VR games. Comment with feedback down below!

Dive deep into the infamous ship’s fascinating history with Titanic VR. The golden rule for creating compelling VR content is that you should allow people to experience something that would be either impossible or too dangerous, expensive and/or difficult to do in real life. Placing you in a lifeboat in 1912 to witness the RMS

Walmart looks to stay a head of the technology curve with a one-of-a-kind VR shopping experience. To say Walmart has been exploring the possibilities of VR and AR technology in their stores would be a considerable understatement. The company is currently utilizing VR simulations to train employees for stressful scenarios such as Black Friday, as

Insta360 has seemingly been on a non-stop clip when it comes to introducing new products. I remember when they showed me their Insta360 Pro camera and let me use it for a couple weeks. I was so impressed with the overall image quality, but it had a lot of things that needed improving, especially at a $3,500 price point.

The Insta360 Pro was not a consumer camera, but it also wasn’t quite a professional camera either. That’s why it fell into more of a prosumer category. But with the introduction of this new Insta360 Pro 2, we’re starting to see Insta360 get more serious about the target market.

The new Insta360 Pro 2 can now do 8K 3D video at 30 FPS, which was previously limited to 6K 3D in the original Insta360 Pro. The new camera can also do 8K monoscopic at 60 FPS, 6K 3D at 60 FPS and even 4K 3D at 120 FPS. The Insta360 Pro 2 also features in-camera HDR to help reduce the number of highlights because of variance between light sources and camera sensors. The Insta360 Pro 2 also adopts Insta360’s FlowState stabilization technology, which first made its introduction of the Insta360 ONE and is some of the best stabilization I’ve ever seen to date. This helped to solve one of the biggest problems with recording video in 360, camera shake is immersion breaking and causes VR sickness and you can’t have it. That’s why Insta360 basically had to implement this future moving forward. The 12K super high-res still capability remains the same.

One of the biggest problems that I encountered with the original Insta360 Pro was trying to capture shots without having myself be in the shots. This was incredibly difficult with the original Pro because it had a limited range of about 20-30 feet before you lost signal. To remedy this issue, Insta360 is implementing a new antenna technology called FarSight that gives the Insta360 Pro 2 a range of about 300 meters, according to Insta360’s own specs. However, I only witnessed it working at 100 meters, which is still a great improvement over the previous generation. Insta360’s Wi-Fi technology operates at 5.18 GHz which should hopefully interfere less with other 5 GHz signals, and Insta360 claims a ground to air distance of up to 1KM (when used on a drone). FarSight comes standard in the first shipping models of the Insta360 Pro 2, but will eventually be optional in the coming months with a price reduction of $500 if you opt not to get FarSight.

Insta360 also improved the workflow for their cameras with the Insta360 Pro 2, with their integrated Premiere Pro workflow that allows for the use of proxy files to speed up the editing process without having to stitch until the final edits are complete. This is an extension of all the capabilities that the Insta360 Pro already has in Premiere Pro, an application that Insta360 only had support for after the launch of the initial Pro camera. With more Premiere

Yesterday we broke the news that Oculus is tentatively targeting a Q1 2019 release for its Santa Cruz standalone VR headset. The news doesn’t come as too much of a surprise given Oculus’ Rift and Go devices both got early releases in their respective launch years. What did raise eyebrows, though, is the news that the VR specialist is keen to port many of the games that have launched on Rift over the past two years to its new device.

With its sensor-free inside-out tracking, Santa Cruz technically should be almost as capable as the Rift on the tracking front, though there were a few small hiccups when we last tried it at Oculus Connect 4. Spec-wise, though, the headset almost certainly won’t measure up to the high-end PCs that power the Rift, which makes speculating about what games could make their way over an entertaining task.

Below, then, we’ve listed nine Rift apps that we think absolutely must come to Santa Cruz. It would be easy to just repeat our existing list of the best Rift games you can play today, but we’ve taken technical ambition into heavy consideration for this list. We’d love to see Echo Arena on a mobile device, for example, but it feels like too big of an ask (we’d be happy to be wrong of course).

Beat Saber

We recently saw someone on Reddit say that if Santa Cruz has Beat Saber as a launch title then it’s basically going to print money. There probably isn’t a better way to put it; Beat Games’ Star Wars-style rhythm action game is arguably the closest we’ve yet gotten to VR’s killer app, attracting plenty of attention for its lightsaber-fuelled gameplay. It’s so popular that people are even ripping it off with very little effort to conceal it.

The chance to play Beat Saber tether-free is just too tempting to pass up, and would really encourage us to lose ourselves in the music more than ever. Add to that the fact that incoming features like multiplayer and a track editor will be much closer to completion by the time Santa Cruz launch rolls around and this could be the biggest game on the platform.

Blasters of the Universe

If I had to pick a wave shooter to be ported to Santa Cruz (and, let’s be honest, there’s probably plenty of them coming) it would have to be Secret Location’s stylish Saturday morning tribute. Why? Because Blasters of the Universe is as much about dodging as it is attacking. It’s a bullet hell game, which means you need to avoid a steady stream of projectiles being shot right at your face. Can you think of any better test for the headset’s inside-out tracking?

As a showcase of VR’s ability to put you right in the action, Blasters of the Universe is one of the best examples currently out there. With a deep weapon customization system and an endless game mode, there’s more than enough here to keep you entertained and it’s simple enough for anyone to

Oculus’ VR for Good Creators Lab is launching three new projects across the company’s platforms today.

Available now via the Oculus Video app are three 360 experiences that anyone with a passing interest in positive uses of VR should check out. Meeting a Monster, for example, tells the story of Angela King, a former white supremacist. Directed by Gabriela Arp, the piece uses audio recordings, re-enactments and real-life footage to show how King became involved with the white power movement and place a spotlight on her path to redemption. The piece made its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year.

You can check out the trailer for the piece below.

The other two pieces are a part of the Authentically Us series from director Jesse Ayala and produced by Pride Foundation. The first, She Flies By Her Own Wings, takes a look at the increased discrimination of transgender service people and seeks to raise awareness of the issue. We’re Still Here, meanwhile, tells the story of Aiden Crawford and the idea of Two-Spirit gender identity and sexuality. A third entry in the series is expected to release later down the line.

VR for Good is now in its third year and specifically looks to provide funding and resources to under-represented filmmakers and content creators in the VR scene.

Each of the videos is available to watch via Oculus Rift, Go and Gear VR and you can find more information on the Oculus blog.

Over the last few decades, many developers have tried to deliver music creation tools within the confines of a traditional video game, and the majority of them have failed – writing and performing simply doesn’t translate well to gamepads, and when more intricate control schemes are used, the fact that you’re technically playing a video game becomes rather irrelevant.

Track Lab is the latest game to step up to this challenge, throwing in an intuitive PlayStation VR puzzle game while also offering several different tools for composing your own electronic beats. As a puzzler, Track Lab is a good few hours of fun, but its creation tools fail to make the case for themselves or the game’s use of PlayStation VR.

https://youtu.be/RLZT0a2ciDs

Track Lab is split into two distinct modes. The first is “Evolver,” a puzzle-based music mode with gradually increasing difficulty. Over nearly 100 levels, the mode tasks you with activating blocks scattered throughout each board by manipulating the trajectory of flying orbs, made possible through several moveable “Optics.” If an orb is moving from left to right, for instance, you can set up an Optic that redirects it up and into the block you’re trying to hit, or you could place one that shoots one orb off in three separate directions.

Figuring out how to make the most of the limited number of Optics you’re given can make the puzzles quite challenging, but as you place them correctly, you’ll begin to hear a funky tune to let you know you’re on the right “track.” When you finally have your “aha!” moment on a lengthy puzzle and see your completed run play out, you can’t help but do a little dance.

In Evolver mode, it’s clear why developer Little Chicken decided to make the game a VR and PlayStation Move exclusive, as you’re constantly picking up and turning Optics in an effort to crack the complicated puzzles laid out in front of you. Being able to quickly scan over the entire board and select a piece cuts down on some of the frustration that inevitably occurs during the more challenging stages, particularly those that make use of more than a dozen separate Optics.

Little Chicken bills Evolver as a teaching tool before heading into Creation mode, and that’s a shame, because Evolver is easily the better of the two. Track Lab’s use of music lends itself extremely well to puzzles, and it would have been nice to have twice or even three times as many different boards to solve. That being said, there are a few times when you’ll likely have to pull off your headphones and hit the mute button on your television, because hearing the same few notes over and over again while you’re stuck on a puzzle is enough to drive you insane.

Once you take off the training wheels and head into Creation mode to make some tunes on your own, Track Lab starts to fall apart. You’re presented with a simple repeating loop that you can expand using Optics to create